Friday, March 31, 2017

Lest there be any remaining doubt, this telegram has been recently unearthed in the Israeli archives. Sent by Heinrich Himmler to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in 1943, it conclusively vindicates the fact that the Arab struggle has historically been with the Jews, not Zionists. We know from other pronouncements that the Mufti's declared enemy is Jews 'wherever you find them', including the Arab world. The Mufti was the chief source and instigator of the incitement leading to the Farhud in Iraq in 1941. (With thanks: Lily)

A telegram from Heinrich Himmler to the grand mufti of Jerusalem has been found in the archives of Israel’s National Library.

Believed
to have been sent in 1943, it contains a promise by Hitler’s deputy to
Haj Amin al-Husseini that the German Reich will stand behind the Arabs
of Palestine and support their struggle against “Jewish intruders.”

Published on the library website
on Wednesday, the telegraph notes that the struggle against world Jewry
has been a principle of the German National Socialists from the start,
and that the regime has always followed “with particular sympathy,” the
struggle of “freedom-loving Arabs,” especially those in Palestine
battling the Jews.

“The joint recognition of the enemy and the
struggle together against it are what build the solid basis between the
National Socialists of Greater Germany and freedom-loving Muslims of the
world,” Himmler wrote.

SS chief Heinrich Himmler in 1940 (Public domain)

The telegram concludes with the SS chief
sending the mufti his warm greetings on the “unhappy” anniversary of the
Balfour Declaration and best wishes for the continuation of the
struggle.

Thursday, March 30, 2017

Stephen Spielberg's Shoah Foundation has launched a campaign to record at least 50
testimonies from the North Africa and Middle East region, where the Nazi
regime had gained a foothold during World War II.

USC Shoah
Foundation collected the first four testimonies in May of 2014 and is
raising funds to begin phase two, in which it plans to record 20 more.

These
audiovisual testimonies, once collected, will be digitized, indexed and
made accessible to people around the world through the Institute’s
Visual History Archive.

The Testimonies from North Africa and the
Middle East collection includes the life stories of Jews who were living
in North Africa and the Middle East during World War II and witnessed
the destruction created there by Nazi occupiers or governments that were
Nazi sympathizers.

Though far from the Holocaust in Europe, North
Africa and the Middle East were an important part of Hitler’s Final
Solution. Hitler intended to exterminate all Jews, not just those in
Europe, and according to Holocaust scholar Sir Martin Gilbert, the
persecution of the Jews in French North Africa was an integral part of
the Holocaust in France. For example, Nazis occupied Tunisia from
November 1942 until May 1943, and Jews throughout this part of the world
were subjected to deportation, imprisonment in concentration camps, and
the destruction of their homes, as well as severe anti-Semitism and
anti-Jewish laws from their own governments.

In the first phase of
the project in spring 2014, program director Jacqueline Gmach
interviewed Armand Abecassis, Andre Nahum, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and
Albert Memmi, who are each highly respected scholars and/or authors
living in Paris. She was accompanied by interviewer Serge Moati, a
French artist, journalist, film director and writer, and videographer
Olivier Raffet. Ruth Pearl, mother of the late journalist Daniel Pearl,
also gave her testimony about growing up in Iraq during the Farhud of
1941.

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

A new propaganda video is proof that ISIS (Da'esh) is antisemitic to the core: for them, even the Ayatollahs of Iran are too tolerant towards their Jewish minority. (ISIS is thoroughly hostile towards Shi'ism, which they consider to be a heresy.) Jason Ditz in Anti-War reports:

ISIS has released a new propaganda video, this one unusually in Farsi
language and directed specifically at Iran, threatening to destroy the
current government of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and declaring Khamenei a
“cursed person.”
The video singles out Iran for criticism because of its tolerance for its Jewish minority,
saying that they are trying to “deceive the Sunnis” by presenting
themselves as against the US and Israel while tolerating Iranian Jews
living safely under government protection and having temples in Iranian
cities.

Iran has had a Jewish minority living in its territory for some
3,000 years, and with estimates of as many as 25,000 Jews living there,
is unique among Middle East nations in having such a community, with
other nations in the region not tolerating their Jewish minorities after
the establishment of Israel.

ISIS has been extremely hostile toward Iran since their founding, as
a Sunni jihadist group that got its start attacking an Iranian-backed
Shi’ite government in Iraq, and while it’s not surprising to see ISIS
singling out Iran as an enemy, it is surprisingly to see the nature of
their narrative.

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Back in 2014Point of No Return began following Fishel Benkhald's struggle to be Pakistan's last self-identifying Jew : we are pleased to report that the authorities, reversing their 2015 decision, have now finally agreed to have the word 'Jew' appear on his national identity card and passport. NDTV reports:

Fishel Benkhald: Muslim father, Jewish mother

Islamabad: Pakistan
has allowed a 29-year-old Jewish activist to change his religion from
Islam to Judaism, an unusual move by authorities in the country. In
normal circumstances, it would have been a normal practice to let Fishel
Benkhald get religion of his choice in the column of religion for the
forms filled to get national identity card and passport.

But
it was a task for Benkhald as he was registered as a Muslim, and it
could be interpreted as apostasy. The ministry of interior in Pakistan
has recently given the green light in response to Benkhald's
application where he had sought 'conversion/correction' of his religion
from Islam to Judaism in his national identity documents, the Express
Tribune reported.

In the National Database and Registration
Authority (NADRA), Benkhald is registered as a Muslim. Faisal, as he is
known in his current identity documents, was born to a Muslim father and
a Jewish mother in Karachi in 1987. He was registered as a Muslim due
to his father's religion.

However, he made an appeal to the NADRA
to allow him to return to the religion of his choice, Judaism, by
correcting it in a smart ID card he had applied for last year.

NADRA,
which was in a fix over the issue, had asked for the interior
ministry's opinion to correct the religion of a former Muslim, a
ministry source was quoted as saying by the daily.

In its
response, the ministry said in writing that "the applicant may be
allowed to practice religion of (his) choosing and preference".

NADRA
usually turns down such requests, especially from Muslims to any other
faith, due to the sensitive religious atmosphere in the country.
Although the interior ministry has given the green signal, NADRA has yet
to issue a smart card after correcting Benkhald's religion.

A
document available with daily suggests that correspondence between the
ministry of interior and NADRA over the issue had taken place in
February-March 2017.

Benkhald thanked the authorities, especially
the interior ministry and NADRA, for granting him the right to profess
religion of his choice, the report said.

Monday, March 27, 2017

On 3 March 2017, Syrian-Jordanian cleric Sheikh Muhammad Sa'id
Hawa delivered a Friday sermon proudly proclaiming that Palestinian
children were nurtured, along with their mother's breast milk, with the
(antisemitic) notion that Palestine was pure Muslim and Arab land, plundered
by the Jews. The significance of this sermon is that the prominent French historian Georges Bensoussan was prosecuted for saying as much. But the Sheikh finds the Palestinian notion perfectly acceptable, while a westerner quoting such pronouncements is guilty of racism and incitement to hatred.Via MEMRI: (with thanks: Lily)

"What racist hate speech are they talking about?" he (the Sheikh) asked.
The sermon was delivered at 'Aisha Mosque, Amman, Jordan, and broadcast
by the Jordanian Yarmouk TV channel.

Muhammad Sa'id Hawa: "Who are the ones who use racist hate
speech? The leaders of the Zionists and the West claim that the
Palestinians are nurturing their children, from a very young age, on
racist and hostile hate speech, and that the Palestinians must stop
nurturing their children on this hostile discourse.

"They are lying! Who are the ones who use racist hate speech?

"Indeed, the Palestinians nurture their children from a very young
age, and even feed them – along with their mother's breast milk – on the
notion that this land [Palestine] is a pure Muslim and Arab land, that
this land was plundered by the Jews, that the only ones with rights to
this land are those who fear Allah and worship Him, that the only ones
with rights to this land are Muslims, or Arabs who are loyal to Muslims
and support them. Yes, this is what we nurture our children on, and we
will continue to do so.

"What racist hate speech are they talking about? The [Jews] are the
ones who came as foreign aggressors from all over the world. They came
as aggressors and plundered this sacred land, violating its sanctities
and driving out its inhabitants.

"So who is using racist hate speech? Thus, we should not talk about employing discourse of tolerance and forgiveness."

Sunday, March 26, 2017

In this sad profile of the last Jews of Egypt, their leader Magda Haroun expresses her wish for Judaism to be part of a museum of Egyptian civilisations. In 2016, the government listed all Jewish monuments and synagogue collections. Israel National News reports:

Policeman by the Pyramids (Flash 90)

There were between 80,000 and 120,000 Jews in Egypt up until the mid-20th century.

They had an impact that far exceeded their numbers in trade and even
cinema, with actress and singer Leila Murad dominating the silver screen
in the 1940s and 1950s.

But the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 led to the disintegration of the
community, with many leaving Egypt or being forced out under the regime
of president Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Today, the Jews of Egypt are estimated to number 18, with 12 of them in the coastal city of Alexandria.

Magda Haroun's dream is for Jewish artifacts to be seen by the public, perhaps in a planned museum of Egyptian civilization.

Officially, the government now makes no distinction between
Pharaonic, Islamic, Coptic and Jewish heritage, and the antiquities
ministry has come up with the funds to fix the roof of Alexandria's
synagogue.

"The (antiquities) minister promised me that a museum of
civilizations will open, representing all the civilizations of Egypt,"
said Magda Haroun.

The Egyptian civilization museum partially opened in February with a
small exhibition but there are no definite plans as yet for displaying
Jewish artifacts in it.

However the minister, Khaled el-Enany, told AFP that in early 2016 he set up a committee to list "all the Jewish monuments and Jewish collections that are in the synagogues."

But on a public level, many Egyptians still have a mixed view of their Jewish compatriots.

"It remains a complicated question," says Amir Ramses, who made a
2013 documentary, "The Jews of Egypt," on the community's history.
"Mentioning the Jews in Egypt was a taboo," he said.

Ben's ancestors - the Judahs, the Ezras, the Belilios and the Sassooons - settled in Calcutta from Baghdad, beginning in the 18th century. Today, there is little trace of these great trading families except in sepia-coloured photos and on the gravestones that lie behind a paddy field in the Calcutta Jewish cemetery .

Trading - in jute, spices, opium - ran in the Judahs' blood. They were part of the Baghdadi community, who 'spoke Arabic, prayed in Hebrew, and longed to be English'. Calcutta was the jewel in a necklace of bustling ports established by the British in India and the Far East.

The Calcutta Jewish story, founded by Shalom Cohen from Aleppo, is almost over, says Ben. From 4,000 Jews, only 20 remain to light a forlorn candle on Friday nights. No rabbi, no weddings, no children, only funerals. Their descendants have moved to Britain, to Israel, to Australia.

So far, so lyrical. Ben goes into romantic overdrive when he claims that Jews felt close to Muslims - 'faiths destined to live together' whether in India or in Israel.

(It is true that Jewish households employed Muslim cooks and trained them in the culinary arts of Baghdad. The reason, according to Mavis Hyman in 'The Jews of the Raj', was not so much 'disgust at pork', but that high caste Hindus would not cook in non-vegetarian households. On the other hand, Jews could go out to Hindu shops to purchase vegetarian pastries, in the certain knowledge that these foods met 'kosher' standards.)

Ben Judah's programme does not emphasise enough that the rigidly-stratified communities of India remained hermetically separate. Hyman quotes an Englishman in the early 20th century describing Calcutta as 'a city of gulfs where nobody knew anybody outside their particular sphere.'

But Ben does explain that the British sphere was perhaps the most impenetrable. No Jews were ever admitted to British clubs. He describes how an uncle, wishing to escape the impending strife between Hindus and Muslims in the 1940s, attempted to convert his British subjecthood into citizenship, by arguing that he was of 'European culture': he failed. He was too 'dusky' to cross the colonial barrier.

Unlike Jews who escaped the Holocaust and pogroms of Europe, the Baghdadi Jews who left Calcutta 'arrived and left happily'. The Jews of India had never experienced persecution. (But this does not mean that the 'white' Baghdadi Jews did not discriminate against the 'brown' Bnei Israel, who traced their history back 2,000 years.)

The authorities in Calcutta are busy restoring three synagogues. Ben Judah concludes his programme with the moving and important point that these buildings, though destined to remain silent, will be lasting memorials to a culture now lost in the places where the founders of the Calcutta community came from. The Great Synagogue in Aleppo has been destroyed; the Great Synagogue of Baghdad is inaccessible.

Another important difference: Jews will continue to be able to visit the graves of their ancestors.

Thursday, March 23, 2017

UN Watch director Hillel Neuer's dramatic rebuttal of a UN Human Rights Council report accusing Israel of 'apartheid' and 'ethnic cleansing' has now gone viral. 'Where are your Jews?' he asked the Arab states behind the report. A stunned silence descended on the chamber. It was perhaps the first time that the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab states had been mentioned in a world forum. Here is a transcript of the debate at the Times of Israel.

Hillel Neuer

UN Watch(Executive Director Hillel Neuer):
Mr. President, let me begin by putting the following on the record:
Everything we just heard — from the world’s worst abusers of human
rights, of women’s rights, of freedom of religion, of the press, of
assembly, of speech — is absolutely false; and, indeed, Orwellian.

Today’s report does not consider Israelis to
be deserving of human rights — consistent with the approach of this
council, where today’s notorious agenda item against Israel completely
ignores their human rights.

Over the weekend, President Abbas announced he
was giving his highest medal to Rima Khalaf, who resigned from the
Economic and Social Commission of Western Asia, a Beirut-based UN agency
of 18 Arab states, after Secretary General Guterres rightly instructed
her to remove an absurd report which accused Israel of “apartheid.”

Mr. President, why is Mr. Abbas celebrating a
report written by the notorious Richard Falk, after his own Palestinian
Mission here, tried in 2010, to remove Mr. Falk on the basis that he was
“a partisan of Hamas,” as we know from WikiLeaks?

The accusation against Israel is absurd. Israel’s 1.5 million Arabs…

[Interruption with objections by Palestinians, Egypt, and Pakistan.]

President gives UN Watch back the floor.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Israel’s 1.5 million Arabs, whatever
challenges they face, enjoy full rights to vote and to be elected in the
Knesset, they work as doctors and lawyers, they serve on the Supreme
Court.

Now I’d like to ask the members of that
commission, that commissioned that report, the Arab states from which we
just heard. Egypt, Iraq, and the others:

How many Jews live in your countries? How many Jews lived in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco?

Once upon a time, the Middle East was full of Jews.

Algeria had 140,000 Jews. Algeria, where are your Jews?

Egypt used to have 75,000 Jews. Where are your Jews?

Syria, you had tens of thousands of Jews. Where are your Jews?

Iraq, you had over 135,000 Jews. Where are your Jews?

Mr. President, where is the apartheid?

Why is there a UN commission on the Middle
East that does not include Israel? From the 1960s and the ‘70s they
refuse to include Israel. Where is the apartheid, Mr. President?

Mr. President, why are we meeting today on an agenda item singling out only one state, the Jewish state, for targeting.

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Another BDS fail: Israeli musician and grandson of Daoud al-Kuwaity Dudu Tassa have been asked to be the opening act to the British rock band Radiohead on their US tour. (But had Dudu's music not been fashionably cross-cultural and his band called 'the Tel Avivians' instead of 'The Kuwaitis', would he still have been invited?) i 24 News reports (with thanks: Lily):

Dudu Tassa & the Kuwaitis, an Israeli band with Jewish and Arab
performers, has been invited to join iconic British alternative rock band
Radiohead on their US tour as an opening act, Radiohead announced on
Twitter Tuesday.

"Dudu Tassa & The Kuwaitis will support Radiohead on their US
headline dates, beginning in Miami on March 30th," Radiohead tweeted.

According to the group's website, Dudu Tassa & the Kuwaitis is a
"cross-cultural joint Jewish-Arabic project from Israel which revives
the music of the Al-Kuwaiti Brothers - composers of some of the most
popular Iraqi songs from the early 20th century."

The Al- Kuwaiti brothers were Dudu Tassa's grandfather and great uncle, Jewish Iraqis who immigrated to Israel in the 1950s.

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

That paragon of virtue, the UN Council for Human Rights, frequently accuses Israel of 'apartheid' and 'ethnic cleansing', in the hope that if you repeat a lie often enough, it will stick.

If there is one man who is inured to the international verbal lynch mob, it is UN Watch representative Hillel Neuer. At the 20 March session, his speech was interrupted by Egypt, Palestine and Pakistan, but he managed to reduce the chamber to silence with one sentence: 'Where are your Jews?'

'The Arab world used to be full of Jews', he said. 'Algeria once had 140,000. Algeria, where are your Jews? Egypt had 75,000. Egypt, where are your Jews?' And so he went on, enumerating all the Arab states sitting on the Council.

If that was proof of 'ethnic cleansing', to single out the world's one Jewish state was 'apartheid'.

Thousands of Jews are known to have converted to Islam under the 13th century fundamentalist rule of the Almohads and Almoravids in Spain and North Africa, but not much of their literary work survives. Now Professor Paul Fenton of the Sorbonne has brought to light a rare document by the Muslim convert from Judaism Ibn Zikri. An annotated Arabic
edition of Ibn Zikri's Rashf al-darab fi fadl bani Isra'il wal-'arab (0n
the Eminence of Israelites and Arabs) was published by CSIC, Madrid, in 2016.

This book opens up a whole new area of religious studies for it it is
the first ever publication of a polemical work by a neo-Muslim of Jewish
descent in defence of Israelite ethnicity.

Here is an extract from Professor Fenton's Introduction in English:

"The present publication of Muhammad Ibn Zikri's Rasf al-darab represents the first appearance of a unique apologetic work emanating from the ranks of the Jewish Marranos, known as Muhajirun, or emigres. Of the several crypto-Jewish communities that existed in Islamic lands, none, as far as I know, produced any substantial literary works reflecting their situation within the Muslim-Jewish convivencia. Despite their longstanding conversion to Islam, generally by force, the descendants of the Moroccan Marranos, often known as bildiyyin or bled, continued over the centuries to constitute a distinct section of Maghrebi society whose destiny was often to be dismal. Indeed bias against them festered among certain sections of the Moroccan aristocracy. Retrieved from the dust of oblivion, Ibn Zikri's work opens a new chapter in the history of inter-religious polemics and constitutes the most explicit defence of Jewish ethnicity in the arena of the medieval debate about ethnic superiority known as su'ubiyya."

Monday, March 20, 2017

In the 100th anniversary year of the Balfour Declaration, Ofer Aderet at Haaretz pursues the will o'wisp of the binational state by evoking those Mizrahi 'bridge-builders' in the 20th century who advocated a 'shared' existence in Palestine. The article is predicated on several myths. Despite superficial resemblances between Arabs and Mizrahi Jews, they have quite different values; the pre-Zionist situation was not always one of peaceful coexistence, and both sides are not equally to blame for 'hostilities' in Palestine; as the chief victims of Arab antisemitism, Mizrahim are generally more distrusting of Arabs than others. Lastly, as civil war rages in neighbouring Arab states, the 'shared future' vision of the bridge-builders seems more distant than ever. (With thanks: Lily)

An immigrant from Bulgaria chatting to an Arab in Jaffa, 1949 (Israel GPO/Zoltan Kluger)

With 2017 marking the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, the 70th anniversary of the UN Partition Plan vote and the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War, new historical research is seeking to shed light on some of the silenced and forgotten voices that were part of the lively Jewish-Arab discourse in British Mandatory Palestine.

“These voices spoke of another option, the road not taken, which centered on a Jewish-Arab identity. It’s important that we recognize it, particularly given today’s fragmented reality,” Prof. Moshe Naor of the University of Haifa told Haaretz last month. “We want to underscore the complexity of this debate and not let the dichotomy of ‘Arabs’ and ‘Jews’ be viewed on such a simple level,” added Dr. Abigail Jacobson of the Van Leer Institute.

Their English-language book “Oriental Neighbors: Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine” (Brandeis University Press) was published last December. It contains a wealth of examples of attempts at dialogue between Arabs and Mizrahi Jews – efforts that emphasized their ethnic, linguistic, cultural and geographical closeness, despite tensions between the Zionist and Palestinian movements.

The Mizrahi Jews who lived in British Mandatory Palestine – which existed from April 1920 to May 1948 – fell into three main categories: descendants of Jews who had arrived after the expulsion from Spain and Portugal; immigrants from Arab countries; and Yemenites. At the start of the mandate era, they made up 40 percent of the Jewish population. As more waves of aliyah arrived from Europe, this percentage was reduced by about a quarter.

The political, social, economic and cultural cooperation documented in the book illustrate how, at the time, some aspired to create a “New Middle East” in which Mizrahi Jews would make use of their dual Jewish and Arab identities to mediate and bridge between the two peoples and movements.

One such person was David Avisar, an educator and writer of Iraqi-Jewish origin. The organization he headed, Pioneers of the East (Haultzei Hamizrah), maintained that Mizrahi Jews had always lived with Arabs in “brotherhood and friendship,” and that “strangers are sowing conflict between us.”

In 1923, Avisar published a manifesto titled “The Arab Question,” in which he discussed the “racial and cultural affinity of the two peoples – Jews and Arabs” – and the “possibility of forging a shared life in Palestine.”

In 1929 – the year of the Hebron riots that shook Jews living in British Mandatory Palestine – Avisar published a plan for a binational state, called “A Proposal for Understanding and Agreement with the Arabs of Palestine.” He wrote that the Mizrahi Jews should directly address the Arabs, and was critical of the Ashkenazi Jews from Europe whose actions “had been taken over the heads of these masses,” without consideration for “the Arab settlement that has been in Palestine for 1,300 years.”

His plan called for the declaration of a single state on both sides of the Jordan River, in which Jews and Arabs, who share “race, creed, history, language and hope,” would live side by side.

Could an outlook such as Avisar’s, who championed cultural and social cooperation between Jews and Arabs, have done anything to prevent the escalation of hostilities between the two peoples?

Sunday, March 19, 2017

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized
on Friday following an uproar over comments he made deemed offensive to
Jews of Middle Eastern extraction, the Times of Israel reports. Vociferous among his critics were several MKs including Moroccan-born Amir Peretz. But Miri Regev, the culture minister, who has, in the past, been swift to condemn similar anti-Mizrahi remarks, was notably silent. (With thanks: Lily)

During
a meeting of coalition party leaders on Thursday, Netanyahu was asked
by Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon — who is of Libyan decent — why he
called for a six-month delay of the scheduled April opening of the new
public broadcaster, to which the prime minister responded “my Mizrahi
gene acted up,” seemingly attributing his rash decision to this
stereotype.

Mizrahi is a Hebrew word meaning “eastern” and
is used to refer to Jews whose families came from the Middle East and
North African, as opposed to Ashkenazi Jews of European descent.

Saturday, March 18, 2017

Public Radio International took a break from covering Donald Trump in order to do a report on Judeo-Arabic. In Montreal, they tracked down Elsie Solomon, Lisette Shashoua and Gladys Kattan, three Iraq-born women who still speak the language. Regrettably we don't hear much of the dialect in this report: we get more of the historical context. One thing is sure: This language, while experiencing a mini-revival, is on its way to extinction.

Judeo-Arabic is more than a dialect. New York University Hebrew and
Judaic studies professor Benjamin Hary calls it a "religiolect."

But as a natural language, it's dying.

With so few Jews left in Arab countries, it is barely spoken — especially among the young.

There is, though, renewed interest in Judeo-Arabic as a cultural
artifact. In 2013, an Israeli feature film about the exodus of Jews from
Iraq included mainly Judeo-Arabic dialogue. And there are attempts to
capture and document the language before it dies out.

All of which makes the three women Alina spoke with happy that their native tongue won't entirely vanish.

Friday, March 17, 2017

Long but fascinating essay by Samuel Tadros for the Hoover Institution. It describes how Arabs have begun to revive the memory of their lost Jews. However, the Jew they choose to remember is a distorted, anti-Zionist Jew who often only fulfils his destiny if he converts to Islam. (With thanks: David T)

For over six decades, Arabic-speaking peoples have undertaken a deliberate effort to
erase part of their memories. No grand council was convened to approve the measure,
but a collective decision was nonetheless made. No longer would it be remembered that
once upon a time, not so long ago, Jews had lived among them.

To aid the deliberate
memory loss, a physical one would be attempted. Buildings left empty would soon be
occupied. Synagogues would be demolished. No one needed a reminder of what had
once existed, for the decision to collectively forget was nearly unanimous. Certainly not
the new military governments, whose claims to legitimacy were increasingly crafted
around a fight with “the Zionist entity.”

But the organized efforts by governments to
eradicate this memory could not have succeeded had it not been met with enthusiasm
and willing participation by the peoples themselves. To remember is to ask and some
questions were better left buried, for an individual’s as well as a nation’s health.
This is not to say that the memory of the Arabic-speaking countries’ Jews was completely
wiped out.

After all, no matter how successful the effort to eradicate all physical evidence,
it was impossible to completely erase the existence of more than 850,000 Jews who had
lived in the Arabic-speaking countries for centuries.

Some things were bound to remain.
An abandoned synagogue, a story from a grandmother, an odd name encountered
in an old book, a 1949 Egyptian movie called
Fatma, Marika and Rachel,
some traces
remained. But these traces were not of humans but of ghosts. The Jew, who had once
lived there, was not a complete human being. Jews were mythical figures, of whose lives
little was known except the confidence in their treason to the countries that had hosted
them.

The Jew was an alien body that had been expelled from the nation, just as the
Zionist entity would be expelled from the region, one day, soon.
But inevitably, today or tomorrow, an interest in the lost memory is bound to occur.
A moment of personal or collective crisis, a moment of shock, a moment of confusion
forcing self-reflection the urge may take many forms, but the questions are inevitable.
And so it has come to pass that the lost memory of the Jews who once lived among
them has returned to haunt the Arabic-speaking peoples.
Before memory was to be regained, a few glimpses of the mysterious other were to appear.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

In 1965, the Tunisian leader Habib Bourguiba suggested that the Arab world bury the hatchet with Israel. But Bourguiba was thwarted by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. In an impulse carried over from the Nazi era, swept up by the anti-Jewish hysteria of the Arab Street, Nasser embarked on the path to war to 1967 - a war that would result in a catastrophic Arab defeat. Must-read by Mattias Kuntzel in Fathom magazine. (With thanks: Lily)

Nasser was born in 1918. In 1935 or 1936 he became a member of the
Young Egypt Society led by Ahmad Hussein – a radical nationalist
movement that was pro-Nazi in several respects. ‘The Second World War
and the short period before it fired the spirit of our youth,’ wrote
Nasser, ‘and moved our whole generation towards violence.’[29]
Leading members of the Young Egypt Society included Ali Maher and Aziz
al-Misri, two prominent Egyptian politicians who were known for their
anti-British and pro-Axis stance.[30]

In 1937, Nasser entered the Military Academy. In 1938, the core of
the Free Officers movement that would take power in 1952 was formed.
When in 1942 ‘the Germans were close to Egypt’, recalled movement member
Abdel Latif Boghdadi, we ‘thought it our duty to do something against
the British. We formed a secret organisation in the Air Force to disrupt
and impede the British withdrawal from the Western Desert by sabotaging
their lines of communication and supply.’[31]

In 1943, Nasser and some of his military colleagues held meetings
with Mahmud Labib, a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Those
gatherings took place once a week and ‘continued uninterrupted until May
1948, when mobilisation for the Palestine war [of 1948] occurred.’[32] In the 1930s the Brotherhood had received financial aid from Nazi Germany because of its antisemitic orientation.[33]
Thus, in 1947, Hassan al-Banna, the Brotherhood’s leader, explained the
United Nations decision in favour of a partition of Palestine in
antisemitic terms, deeming ‘the whole United Nations intervention to be
an international plot carried out by the Americans, the Russians, and
the British under the influence of Zionism.’[34] In 1948, the Brotherhood was nevertheless by far the largest political organisation in Egypt with at least one million members.[35]

Nasser was among those officers who provided lengthy clandestine
training to the Brothers in preparation for the Palestine war of 1948.
It was thus no accident that in 1949 Nasser’s name was found on a manual
about grenades in a Muslim Brotherhood hideout.[36]
After the Free Officers’ revolution had swept away the monarchy and the
old power elites in July 1952, ten of the fourteen officers now running
the country had, at one time or another, sworn loyalty to the
Brotherhood.[37] With good cause the Soviets condemned the ‘reactionary officers’ group’ and their new ‘military dictatorship’.[38]

In 1942, at British instigation, Aziz al-Misri and Ali Mahir had been
dismissed because of their explicit pro-German stance; both were
reinstated ten years later by the Free Officers: Al-Misri was hailed as
the ‘spiritual father’ of the July revolution and the Officers made Ali
Mahir the new prime minister.[39]
It was not by chance that Egypt was henceforth to become the El Dorado
of former Nazis war criminals and antisemites. One example is that of
air force officer Mohammad Radwan. He had managed to reach the German
lines during the war. He made his way to Germany, where he was arrested
by the Allies in 1945 and then sentenced in Egypt to fifteen years in
jail. In 1952, he was released and then employed in the Armed Forces’
Department of Public Affairs.[40]
Another is neo-Nazi publisher Helmuth Kramer: He received political
asylum in Egypt in 1965 after a German court had found him guilty of
‘spreading Nazi ideas’. According to Kramer, Nasser personally dealt
with his asylum request and gave permission for him to continue
publishing his books.[41]

Since Moscow had refused to deliver intermediate-range rockets to
Egypt in 1959, Nasser invited more than 300 German engineers and
scientists who had formerly worked for the Nazi government to develop
such missiles. In 1962, missiles were for the first time on display at a
Cairo parade. ‘The staff of the Israeli embassy in Paris mourns and the
Jews in New York are in fear,’ Al-Ahram rejoiced.[42]

Though Nasser denied being an anti-Semite (‘I have never been anti-Semitic on a personal level’[43])
he emphasised the great relevance of the Protocols of the Elders of
Zion for an understanding of world affairs and claimed publicly that
‘three hundred Zionists … govern the fate of the European Continent’.
Whoever believes such a thing must of course deny the Holocaust. Nasser
denied it both directly (‘No one … takes seriously the lie about six
million Jews who were murdered’[44]) and indirectly, by claiming that ‘Ben-Gurion … has killed as many Arabs as Hitler killed Jews.’[45]

Whoever believes in the Protocols will also seek to destroy Israel.
And, indeed, Nasser’s obsession with the Jewish state was a constant
theme of his time in power. Firstly, he considered Israel a bridge-head
of Western imperialism, a conspiracy theory that gained some credibility
after Israel’s involvement in the Suez crisis of 1956.[46]
Second, he considered Israel to be expansionist by nature. ‘Arab unity
means the liquidation of Israel and the expansionist dreams of Zionism’
he told a crowd in 1965.[47]

Nasser’s background did not of course rule out a later change of
course. In 1953, his friend and combatant Anwar al-Sadat praised Adolf
Hitler as an ‘immortal leader’ but 26 years later recognised Israel’s
right to exist. Why was Nasser incapable of making such a move?

This is where the radical anti-Zionism of the ‘Arab street’ enters
the picture. It may well be that it was the mass enthusiasm which
flooded Egypt on the eve of the Six-Day War that kept Nasser on the path
to war.

The Arab world had reacted ecstatically to Egypt’s Sinai move in May
1967.

After the withdrawal of the UNEF troops, Cairo looked more like a
carnival than a city preparing for war: ‘The City was now festooned with
lurid posters showing Arab soldiers shooting, crushing, strangling, and
dismembering bearded, hook-nosed Jews.’[48] The closure of the Straits of Tiran worked like magic: Now, Nasser’s Ahlan Wa-sahlan (‘You
are welcome’) reverberated throughout the Arab world. ‘Congratulations
and messages of support poured in from all capitals. Delegations began
to arrive in Cairo from Iraq, Syria, Algeria, Kuwait and other
countries.’[49] Overnight, Nasser’s prestige in the Arab world had soared to new heights.

This enthusiasm, this fervent hope for the destruction of an
established state is quite exceptional. In 1945, the Arab League was
founded with the goal of preventing the creation of Israel. So far,
nothing out of ordinary: many emerging countries initially met with
resistance and had to fight for their right to exist. But what followed
was altogether exceptional, as Ruth R. Wisse explains:
Israel won its [1948] War of Independence, but … Arab leaders did not
acknowledge Israel’s independence. Though the world was now dealing
with a Jewish country rather than a dispersed people, the political
functions of Israel in Arab politics became almost identical to the
functions of the Jew in the politics of Europe. … Arab leaders forged a
target and scapegoat.[50]

It was this Arab response that rendered Israel exceptional despite
its successful establishment as a state. ‘Zionism was politically
unexceptional – dozens of new countries have joined the United Nations
since 1948. The exception was anti-Zionism: the organisation of politics
against the Jewish state.’[51]

Merely anti-Zionism? ‘The Arab side is agitating the masses by
purposely not separating Anti-Zionism from antisemitism,’ stated Habib
Bourguiba in 1965.[52]
He was right: Arab leaders adopted the texts, images, and tactics of
European antisemitism. ‘With the ideological inversion that is at the
heart of antisemitism,’ observes Wisse, ‘they denied the Jews their
country and accused them of denying the Arabs theirs.’[53]

Antisemitic agitation in Arab countries, based on European models,
was nothing new, as recent studies of Nazi antisemitic propaganda in the
Arab world have proved.[54]
For example, from April 1939 to April 1945, daily Arabic language radio
broadcasts from Berlin constantly urged their Arab listeners to prevent
the birth of a Jewish state and to exterminate the Jews living in
Palestine. These antisemitic programs were popular and widely heard.
Time and again they claimed that Zionism was inherently expansionist and
aspired to destroy Islam.

The closer the defeat of Nazi Germany came,
the shriller became the broadcasts’ warnings about the consequences for
Palestine should ‘World Jewry’ seize its opportunity. What was the
significance of this for Nasser’s 1967 decisions?
We know that the Nazis’ radio propaganda continued to reverberate
after Germany’s defeat. While the view of the British Foreign Office,
which in 1946 ‘spoke of Arab hatred of the Jews being greater than that
of the Nazis’, may be exaggerated,[55]
it is clear that wartime Nazi propaganda contributed to increased
hostility after the war. Certain Arab countries, observed Bernard Lewis,
‘have been the only places in the world where hard-core, Nazi-style
antisemitism is publicly and officially endorsed and propagated.’[56]

Historians of the Middle East agree that it was to a large extent the
pressure from the ‘Arab street’ that had previously driven a reluctant
Arab League into a full-scale war against Israel in 1948.[57]
Egypt’s prime minister Mahmud al-Nuqrashi Pasha, for example, was
against the military assault that took place in 1948. However, he said
he was swayed by public opinion that ‘was all in favour of the war, and
considered anyone who refused to fight as a traitor.’[58]
In 1948, the Muslim Brotherhood in particular had created an atmosphere
in which war seemed the only logical and natural process: ‘The
[Brotherhood] Society succeeded in drawing Egypt into a full-scale
military initiative in Palestine.’[59]

In 1967 this constellation reappeared, but in a new form.

In 1967, 22 years after World War Two, the direct reverberations of
Nazi propaganda hardly played a role. Instead, the Arab defeat of 1948 –
neither reflected on nor really admitted – seemed to require
revenge. At the same time, Arab rulers profited from the prevailing mood
by using anti-Jewish scapegoating to divert their peoples’ attention
from their own failures. According to Bourguiba’s analysis of 1965,
Arabs and Israelis ‘would be able to live in harmony after having
mutually ridded themselves of their complexes and their extremists’.
This kind of clean-up, however, never began.

Conclusion

Behind the question of whether Nasser could have resisted the ‘Arab
street’ in 1967 lies another: why did he incite their mass fury in the
first place? In my view, the main cause of both Nasser’s decision and
the subsequent enthusiasm of his followers was the antisemitic impulse
as it was carried over from the Nazi period to the post-war period and
then to the next generation.
It was neither Israel nor Zionism that provoked the 1967 war but the latent anti-Zionism and antisemitism in the Arab world.

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Iranian Foreign Minister
Mohammed Javad Zarif has accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
of distorting history by repeatedly saying that modern Iran, like
ancient Persia, is bent on annihilating the Jewish people. How could that be so, he claims, when Persia 'saved' the Jews on several occasions? Michael Rubin asks if Iran really respects Jews in Commentary (with thanks: Lily):

Mohammad
Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, took to Twitter earlier this week
to castigate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for propagating
what Zarif termed “fake history.” The offense Zarif protested was the
Israeli prime minister’s decision to draw allusions between the story of
Purim and the present day. “To sell bigoted lies against a nation which
has saved Jews three times, Netanyahu resorting to fake history [and]
falsifying Torah. Force of habit,” the Iranian foreign minister declared.

Zarif’s
rebuke of Netanyahu was enough to win applause in some circles, but
those who buy into the myth of an Iranian haven for Jews should think
again.

Take
the modern day. How often have pundits talked about the Islamic
Republic’s supposed tolerance for Jews by citing the fact that Iran’s
parliament has a Jewish representative or that Iran is home to perhaps
20,000 Jews, supposedly the second-greatest Jewish population in the
Middle East besides Israel?

Let’s put aside the fact that no one
knows just how many Jews are in Iran today. The 20,000 figure has been
bandied about since the 1990s, even though many Jews continue to leave
Iran for Israel or the United States. And also put aside the fact that
the “second largest community” doesn’t mean anything when the difference
between the first and the second are several orders of magnitude. It is
akin to saying Finland is the second-largest destination for
sun-and-surf beach vacations if the only other choice in the survey is
Jamaica. What matters is that, under the regime that Zarif represents,
Iran has lost at least 80 percent of its Jewish population. That’s
generally not a sign that Iran is a welcoming and healthy place for Jews
to thrive or even live.

Praise for having a Jewish representative
in parliament is just as misplaced. When I attended synagogue as a
student in Iran, members of the Jewish community did not trust the
representative. His sole purpose seemed to be to pass pronouncements
from the government to the synagogues and to be cited to deflect
attention from Iran’s fairly horrendous human rights record.

Beyond
that, though, is Iran safe for Jews? It depends. Pogroms—as vicious as
any in Eastern Europe—characterized nineteenth century Iran. Then there
were the restrictive rules: In 1889, for example, the government
prohibited Jews in Isfahan from going outside on wet days lest rainwater
spread their impurity. Jews were also forbidden from touching food,
speaking loudly, or purchasing any goods in the market. (Daniel Tsadik
provides an excellent account of modern Jewish history in his 2007 book,
Between Foreigners and Shi‘is; Habib Levy’s Comprehensive History of the Jews of Iran remains a masterpiece).

It
is true that, at times, Iran was a relative haven for the Jews. The
irony here, though, is that it was the regime that Zarif represents not
only overthrew an Iranian state that allowed its Jewish minority to
thrive, but also sought to close the door on the laudable regimes of the
distant past.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

There is nothing more precious to a Jewish community than its Torah scrolls: that is why Jews on the run always try and take their scrolls with them. The Tunisian authorities are now the self-proclaimed guardians of abandoned Jewish artefacts and have called a press conference to announce that they have foiled the smuggling of a 'rare' Torah out of the country. (Two caveats: because it is written on cow hide does not make the scroll ancient. The claim that 'Hebrew language experts that the scroll was written before the various books of the Torah were organized in their present order' sounds highly dubious. ) Report by YNet News: (With thanks: Boruch)

Tunisian authorities announced that they prevented a 15th-century
Torah scroll from being smuggled out of the country. The scroll was
written on bovine skin.

According to Tunisian authorities, a group of suspects were arrested
following a tip that the Torah scroll was being transferred to a
European country as part of an antiquities smuggling operation.

During a press conference, Tunisian National Guard spokesman Khalifa
al-Shibani presented the rare Torah scroll, which measures 37m long and
47cm wide.

According to al-Shibani, unidentified foreign elements attempted to
buy the scroll, which he described as "a unique historical item for the
world."

Tunisian press conference of ancient Torah

Later in the press conference, al-Shibani said, "Experts at the
National Heritage Institute have confirmed that the Torah scroll is an
extremely rare, historical and invaluable item that is from the 15th
century."

The scroll seems to contain all parts of the Torah, yet Hebrew
language experts argue that this scroll was written before the various
books of the Torah were organized into their present order.

Monday, March 13, 2017

The future of the Iraqi-Jewish archive, the collection of documents shipped to the US for restoration in 2003, has still not been resolved: Iraq wants it back as its national heritage. However, the announcement that another US museum is to host the IJA exhibit will delay its possible return for another year. Baltimore's Child reports:

The Jewish documents were discovered in a flooded basement and at first left to dry out in the Baghdad sun

The Jewish Museum of Maryland will host a major traveling exhibit,
Discovery and Recovery: Preserving Iraqi Jewish Heritage from October
15, 2017 to January 15, 2018.

The exhibit details the dramatic recovery
of historic materials relating to the Jewish community in Iraq from a
flooded basement in Saddam Hussein’s intelligence headquarters, and the
National Archives’ ongoing work in support of U.S. Government efforts to
preserve these materials. The 2,000 square foot exhibit features 23
recovered items and a “behind the scenes” video of the fascinating yet
painstaking preservation process. Exhibit opened Sundays through
Thursdays every week.

Sunday, March 12, 2017

It is widely known that Saudi Arabia permits neither Jews nor Christians to become citizens, nor will it officially allow Jewish travellers to enter. But until 1934, the year when the kingdom was established, Jews lived at its southern tip, at Najran. However persecution forced hundreds of Najrani Jews to seek shelter in the neighbouring kingdom of Yemen and Aden. Together with the majority of Yemen's Jews, the Najrani Jews were airlifted to Israel in 1949. (With thanks: Lily)

According to Yemenite Jewish tradition, the Jews of Najrān trace their
origin to the Ten Tribes. They lived in the region of Najrān in Saudi
Arabia and were the only group of Yemenite Jews who lived outside Yemen
under the rule of another kingdom. On the strength of the laws of the
desert and tribal protection, they were not subjected to persecution as
were the Jews of Yemen.

They enjoyed the same equality of rights as the
Arabs of Saudi Arabia, were not taxed, and did not pay the *jizya
(the poll tax imposed on non-Muslims in the Muslim countries "in
exchange for the protection" granted them by the government). The
Bedouin of Saudi Arabia, who belonged to the Sunni Islam sect, practiced
religious tolerance toward them and ate meat slaughtered under their
laws of sheḥitah. The Jews of Najrān carried weapons in
self-defense, as did the other inhabitants, and were renowned for their
courage and strength.

There was no other place in the Arabian Peninsula
where Jews lived in such dignity and freedom as in Najrān. By profession
they were craftsmen: they worked essentially in goldsmithing and
repairing arms. They earned a good livelihood and their material
conditions surpassed those of Yemenite Jews. Their settlements were
scattered throughout Najrān in small units of two to forty families.
They lived in clay houses or in huts. Their clothes, of both men and
women, were slightly different from that of Saudi Arabians and Yemenite
Jews.

The strict barrier between men and women, which was customary in
social life throughout Yemen, was nonexistent among them. At festivities
and celebrations men and women sat together and women danced to the
sound of the men's singing.

After 1936, their relations with Yemenite
Jews were not very close, because the two groups were under the rule of
different kingdoms which occasionally were at war with each other. The
life of the Jews of Najrān, dispersed as they were in small settlements,
did not encourage the development of Torah studies among them or the
fostering of an independent spiritual culture. In matters of religion
and halakhah they were dependent on the community of nearby Saʿdah (one day away from them), and when necessary, on the bet din of *Sanʿa.

The Jews of Saʿdah served as their spiritual guardians in times of
need: they provided them with religious books and guided them in their
religious practices. Therefore, their prayers, customs, and system of
study were very closely related. In Israel they are concentrated in
Kiryat Ekron, which is inhabited by the Jews of Saʿdah. When the Jews of
Najrān immigrated to Israel in 1949, they numbered about 250.

The Yemeni city of Najran was conquered by Saudi forces in 1934, absorbing its Jewish community, which dates to pre-Islamic times.[7]
With increased persecution, the Jews of Najran made plans to evacuate.
The local governor at the time, Amir Turki ben Mahdi, allowed the 600
Najrani Jews[8]
a single day on which to either evacuate or never leave again. Saudi
soldiers accompanied them to the Yemeni border. These Jews arrived in Saada,[9] and some 200 continued south to Aden between September and October 1949. The Saudi King Abdulaziz demanded their return, but the Yemeni king, Ahmad bin Yahya
refused, because these refugees were Yemenite Jews. After settling in
the Hashid Camp (also called Mahane Geula) they were airlifted to Israel
as part of the larger Operation Magic Carpet.[10]

Saturday, March 11, 2017

The Purim holiday beings tonight. It is one of the most joyful of Jewish festivals - unless you happened to be Anusim - Jews in medieval Spain forced to hide their identity. Their solution was to fast. Fascinating explanation by Aish.com:

A Happy Purim to all readers

Was it too dangerous to celebrate the
Jewish holidays on their real dates? No problem. They would trick their
pursuers by celebrating a few days – or months - before or after the
real date.

The Anusim became accustomed to living in a world of secrecy.

The Anusim therefore gradually became accustomed to living
in a world where secrecy was the norm and disguise was a way of life.
But despite their efforts and good intentions, they did have a problem.
Their connection to the rest of the Jewish world had been severed.
Without access to Jewish books, or even a Jewish calendar, it became
harder and harder to remember all the prayers and laws. And there were
many commandments that they couldn’t perform or were forced to
transgress because the danger was too great.
To compensate, over time the Anusim began to develop their
own unique culture, complete with special prayers and customs. Nowhere
do we see this more clearly than with the holiday of Purim.
Traditionally, the Purim holiday is comprised of two parts: the Fast
of Esther, a one-day fast that takes place the day before Purim, and
Purim itself, a busy day filled with lots of mitzvot (commandments) and noise and laughter. But what is good fun for us was a day fraught with danger if you were a Hidden Jew.
Drown out Haman’s name with noisemakers during the public reading in
synagogue of Megillat Esther? Not in a community that scrupulously kept
the location of their underground synagogues a secret.

Get so drunk at the festive Purim meal that you can’t tell the
difference between “blessed be Mordechai” and “cursed be Haman”? Not
unless you wanted to wake up the next day to a personal invitation to
appear before the court of the Spanish Inquisition.

So what could the Anusim do? In a word, fast. They looked into the megillah
and saw that when the Jewish people were threatened with annihilation,
Queen Esther ordered a three-day fast for everyone. So the Anusim – who lived with that threat every day of their lives - decided to fast for three days, too.

The Inquisition’s records provide us with some fascinating details
about this unique custom. For one thing, the fast was mainly done by
women, who felt a special connection to the heroine of the Purim story,
Queen Esther. But since a three-day fast could be dangerous to a
person’s health, the women found ingenious ways to observe the fast
without endangering their lives.

Friday, March 10, 2017

How are Jews in Muslim countries preparing to mark the festival of Purim? The foiling of a genocidal plot against the Jews of Persia is a particularly delicate matter to celebrate in present-day Iran. Rachel Avraham of Jerusalem Online looks at various beleaguered communities:

Purim in Holon, Israel in 2011 (photo: Avishai Teicher)

Across the world, the Jewish people are preparing to celebrate the
Purim holiday, which is a festive occasion full of joy and happiness.
However, Jews living in many Muslim countries find themselves in a
precarious situation. Due to threats posed by radical Islamist groups
such as ISIS or the regime itself, these Jews are still celebrating but
at the same time, they do so in fear. However, there are exceptions to
this general trend. Despite the rise of radical Islam in the Middle East
and North Africa, there are places where Jews do feel more secure and
thus are able to enjoy the holiday more. In honor of the holiday,
JerusalemOnline is exploring, how are Jews in the Islamic world
celebrating Purim under the radical Islamist threat?

Although the holiday originates in Iran and features Iranian
heroes, the plight of Iranian Jews celebrating Purim is quite dire. The
population that once exceeded a vibrant 70,000 has now dwindled to
approximately 12,000-15,000 members. Despite claims by the Iranian
regime that they accept Jews as a protected religious group, many Jews
have chosen to flee the land of their ancestors. According to anonymous
sources, Iranian Jews can go to synagogue, attend Jewish day schools,
close their businesses for Shabbat and even to consume wine for
religious rituals in a country where alcohol consumption is punished by
lashes and jail time. They claim that the Iranian leadership even
provides financial support for a Jewish hospital and erected a monument
honoring Iranian Jewish soldiers who lost their lives during the
Iran-Iraq War.

However, all Iranian Jews must demonstrate their enmity towards
the State of Israel and to avoid having any connection with it. The
anonymous sources stress that historic Jewish cemeteries in Iran have
quietly been getting destroyed and local Jews don’t have the ability to
object to it. They stress that even though Jewish day schools exist,
they are not autonomous and they are controlled by the government. Many
of them even have Muslim principals who force Jewish children to go to
school on Shabbat. Prayer books and rabbis are in short supply. Given
this, the sources stress that local Jews feel like outsiders in the
Islamic Republic of Iran despite their almost 2,000 years of history in
the country.
Iranian Jewish dissident Marjan Keypour Greenblatt added that one
explanation for this sentiment is the Shia supremacy that is prevalent
across Iran: “The officially recognized religions (Jews, Christians and
Zoroastrians) are still second-class citizens according to the law,
entitled to lesser rights and privileges.” Nevertheless, despite the
fact that Iranian Jews suffer from this predicament, Iranian Jewish
dissident Dr. Sima Goel stressed that the local Jews still take pride in
their identity and celebrate Purim in spite of “the dictator that
oppresses them.”

The world's oldest Jew has died in Jerusalem, purportedly aged 117. Zecharia Barashi was born in Kurdistan and came to Palestine in the 1930s. (However, it is impossible to verify his age as there were no records at the time.) Report in The Forward:

The 117-year-old Rabbi Zecharia Barashi on Tuesday left a world very
different from the one he found, as Israel’s oldest resident – and the world’s
oldest Jew and rabbi - passed away from natural causes at his Jerusalem home.

Barashi immigrated to pre-state Israel in 1936 from his native Iraqi
Kurdistan, first laboring as a construction worker and then as a rabbi
ministering to his fellow Kurds, according
to The Times of Israel. He also founded a national organization for Kurdish
Jews and worked as an educator in Jerusalem.

His longevity records were not confirmed by the Guinness Book of World
Records due to issues with documentations, but his claim was accepted by
Israeli authorities. He is survived by 29 grandchildren, 72 great-grandchildren
and 24 great-great-grandchildren.

Thursday, March 09, 2017

Home in Morocco for Soly Anidjar was an apartment with servants and family holidays. When her family arrived in Israel, they did not have electricity, running water, a paved road or enough beds to sleep in. There are lessons there for today's French immigrants: they have it comparatively cushy - yet substantial numbers return to France every year. (With thanks to the author and to Michelle)

Every year, more and more French
Jews decide to settle in Israel: a sometimes
painful choice, often dictated by the rise in anti-Semitic acts in France.
Many French Jews who came to settle in Israel eventually leave, often
after having a difficult time integrating. They have left behind language,
work, money, family, country of birth, school,
friends, classmates, neighbours, the synagogue, Sunday as the official day of rest over a
lifetime. Plus they have the headache of finding accommodation. Where can we put the sideboard, the Louis XIV and Louis XV armchairs? In
Israel the kitchen is the dining room. In short, they feel fobbed off,
stifled. The young people didn't want to leave France -
their parents decided for them.

Nobody promises Eldorado.
Aliya is complex and difficult. Wages are low compared to France, plus
you use up all your savings. The reality of everyday life is far from what they dreamed of. When you arrive in Israel, you have to start from scratch. Then there's the abrasive Israeli, who
doesn't say thank you, jumps the queue, he's rude, very rude. But he is
always giving up his seat on the bus and always keep his door open, and comes knocking on your door to offer you bread and cakes
all warm from the oven to wish you Shabbat shalom and happy birthday.
When it came to overcoming hurdles of language and qualification, I've learned to speak Darija
Moroccan Arabic, so they could understand me - few spoke French in Ashdod.
The airplane ticket made provision for us to bring in three giant-sized suitcases, but we had the right to only one suitcase. Dad paid back the price of the tickets to the Jewish Agency over ten years. The Sal Klita, (absorption basket to help new immigrants with their basic needs) of
approximately 4,000 euros for a single person was beyond our wildest dreams. In 1966
it did not exist. The tax breaks did not exist in 1966. Free social security for the first year did not exist in 1966. French schools and lycees did not exist in 1966. Family allowances did not exist in 1966.
It's not because you're a patissier in France that you will become a patissier
in Israel. The job centre will encourage you to learn an extra trade and try your luck for free. Besides they'll give you a
paycheck (Avtakhat Akhnassa), for the long months that
learning the new job will take. We had a nice apartment with two servants in Casablanca and holidayed in Spain every year.
Here no-one knew about holidays. We lived in a tiny apartment of 48 sq.m (the size of our balcony in Casablanca). We were allocated four iron bedsteads, four mattresses and army issue grey blankets, an oil stove and a table measuring one metre squared. There were five of us, but they must have thought we would take it in turns to sleep. Our
household goods stayed in Haifa for months. We were not in a hurry for them as we had no power: the fridge, the washing machine, the television and the gas oven did not budge. The cost of transporting them by truck from Haifa to Ashdod was exorbitant.

The economic
difficulties, and the hardships of integration are part of
aliyah whether it takes a year or 50. I came in 1966. There were five of us - Dad, mum, my two sisters and me. I'm the eldest.

Rising out of the desert, Ashdod today

For six months we lived without electricity and on an untarmacked road, mountains of sand surrounding the fifteen houses that existed in the
Gimel neighborhood where I lived. The houses were not yet finished, there
were no shops, the grocery store did not exist. Once a day a cart
passed by with bread, once a day a pickup truck came with blocks of ice that we put in dishes, laundry bowls and bathtubs. The milkman and oil merchant came with their wagon hitched to a donkey. Dad was without work for
the first few months. In Casablanca, he was director of the Water Board. Here he watered the JNF trees for four hours. He was 40 and this was the era of mass migration of Jews to Israel form Arab countries and Europe. Later he did his military service
and entered the police force. One year after our arrival, the Six-Day
war broke out. It was new for us all : we finally had electricity but it was
war. We were not used to this - it was the end of the world, the sky was falling on our heads. In the 1950s and up to the 1970s the conditions Sephardim lived in were very hard. It took a few decades for the Ashkenazi political establishment to publicly recognize the
huge mistakes that they had committed in their reception and
integration of Sephardim from Arab countries. For years we were Morocco Sakin. The Israeli Black Panthers began their movement in 1971 in Musrara, near Jerusalem, in
response to discrimination. Saadia Marciano was our spokesperson. Improving living conditions for Sephardim wasn't considered a
priority by the government. For them, we didn't exist.
The Sephardi cities of the south of the country, a real
desert - Dimona, Ashkelon, Beersheva, Ashdod, Yeruham, Netivot,
Kiryat-Gat, Kiryat Malakhi - have risen to the challenge. They have greatly contributed to the social and economic
development of Israel. Our Ulpan teacher told us that his
father arrived in Israel in 1921. He had to drain the swamps in the Jezreel valley (Afula). When I walk in that place with its wonderful and majestic landscapes, I say to myself, "it's amazing what we have achieved in
the past hundred years". I hope that future generations can do the same.
Israel is a human adventure, unique and unprecedented. It's a bubbling human lab where ethnic groups from the four corners of the world have
learned to live together.

Wednesday, March 08, 2017

After a trial for incitement to hatred, the prominent historian and author of a study of Jews in Arab countries, Georges Bensoussan, was acquitted yesterday (7 March) by a criminal court, according to Le Monde.

Tuesday, March 07, 2017

This report by Rudaw English is a turn-up for the books: it says that the Kurdish-Jewish directorate under Sherzad Omer Mahmoud Mamsani has now been 'suspended' - ostensibly for lack of funds. Readers of Point of No Return will know that we were from the outset suspicious of this enterprise in a country with no Jews. Mamsani's directorate claimed to represent 430 Jewish families, but the 18,000-member community was evacuated to Israel in 1949. Gullible Western Jews fell for Mamsani's kitsch commemorations of events like the Farhud and Holocaust memorial day, complete with Jewish religious symbols. We were warned that Mamsani was an Iranian agent with no Jewish blood whatsoever, whose role in the abduction of the editor of the Israel-Kurd magazine remains a mystery. We may never know the real story behind the directorate's suspension. (With thanks: Boruch)

Sherzad Mamsani (second from right) at one of his commemorative events. HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— The official
representative of the Jewish community has announced that they have
suspended their representation at Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government’s
(KRG) Ministry of Religious Affairs indefinitely for “some reasons”
without giving any further details.

“Because of some reasons we have suspended our representation at the
Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs until an undeclared time,”
Sherzad Omar Mamsani announced on his Facebook page on Thursday.

The representation was opened in 2015
after the Kurdish parliament passed a law officially recognizing the
Jewish community with full ethno-religious rights, along other minority
religions.

Nabaz Ismail, the spokesperson for the ministry told Rudaw English
that they have not been notified officially of the suspension.

Ismail said Mamsani was conducting his official duties when he last saw him a few days ago.

Mariwan Naqshbandi, a senior official at the ministry, however was
aware of some issues that Mamsani raised with him as recently as
yesterday, mainly about “the lack of funding” to their representation.

A Syrian refugee in Aleppo called Razan who claims she is Jewish has appealed to Israel for help. But Jews usually keep their identity under wraps, and the Jewish Agency has its doubts , according to the Times of Israel. (With thanks: Lily)

Razan adds that “the government [of Israel] is
a powerful government and I believe that it will not abandon any Jew in
the world. Every Jew knows that [Israel] will not neglect him, because
[Israel] is the mightiest country on the face of the earth and will not
abandon its coreligionists.”

The Central Synagogue of Aleppo in January 2016. (Courtesy/Moti Kahana)

Razan’s younger brother Salah, who gave Army
Radio the recording and now lives in London after fleeing Aleppo over a
year and a half ago by way of Turkey, said that his father is Muslim and
his mother Jewish, and that he and his two sisters have always
considered themselves to be Jews.

“When I was a child my mother told me I am a
Jew and I understand that. And before the war I told everyone, everyone
knows I am a Jewish, all the neighbors around me. After the war, I
couldn’t say that, because it is very difficult,” he said.
Despite the family’s appeals for help from
Israel, officials at the Jewish Agency, which has carried out a number
of operations extracting Jews from hostile countries, told Army Radio
that they had doubts about the family’s Jewishness.

People in similar
positions have in the past ensured that their Jewish identities remained
under wraps as to avoid magnifying the danger they face.

Israel has not taken in any refugees from the Syrian civil war and a plan to bring in 100 orphans has recently stalled.

Elizabeth Tzurkov, who researches Syria at the
Israeli think tank Forum for Regional Thinking, told Army Radio that
she was aware of similar cases to that of the woman in the recording and
questioned the source of the Jewish Agency’s skepticism.

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Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)